/r/Games is for informative and interesting gaming content and discussions. Please look over our rules and FAQ before posting. If you're looking for "lighter" gaming-related entertainment, try /r/gaming!

The goal of /r/Games is to provide a place for informative and interesting gaming content and discussions. Submissions should be for the purpose of informing or initiating a discussion, not just with the goal of entertaining viewers.

Journey, Last of Us, Half Life 2, Halo 1, System Shock 2, Warcraft III, Portal, Dark Souls (kind of)... I don't know. There's kind of a ton of awesome games that are really well polished and innovative.

Note many of the examples that you've shown generally have extremely small scope and focused design, or were in development for a long time(and/or had obscene budgets), or frankly built on top of a lot of established "safe" work. Last of Us isn't mechanically new, it has a story that modern gamers generally agree is great.

Portal doesn't have the scope of an RPG. RPGs need to be massive, they need to have tons of intersecting systems, they need to have a ton of content that iterates based on player behavior. You either reduce complexity and iterate on previous designs or you do what Obsidian does.

Half Life 2 was pretty goddamn formulaic IMO. I never understood why people thought of it as a great game other than the level of polish. Hell eveb HL1 was a far better mod platform than it ever was a game, and HL2 didn't have near the variety or quality of mods HL1 had.

But linear, single player FPS games bore the shit out of me. I'd rather every game came out like STALKER and New Vegas than HL2.